Experiment with colored woodlice

[OldHag]

Im not sure what species they are. My daughter found one when we were gathering some rotton wood. It was a pretty brick red with mottled grey spots. We brought it home and it had babies!! So we separated out the colored babies from the grey ones and pretty soon only colored babies were being born!!
Heres a few picures of some adults.
The first is of a redish adult, second is some variations, and third is a more orange adult. I have yellows to red.

Just a fun thing we did, thought Id share it with everyone.

 

[bugmankeith]

Mabye you can call them tiger woodlice. Try breeding some of them with salt and pepper woodlice, then they would be tri-color woodlice. gray,white,and orange.

How do you breed them, like what substrate and what do they eat. How do you tell males from females?

 

[OldHag]

I just keep them on moist peatmoss and put in some dead oakleaves and VERY rotton wood. (Wood that is light as cork and easy to break apart) I also pop in a peice of cucumber or other veggie matter as well as dead things. ie crickets, mice, worms.

As to telling male from female... I dont know:? never thought about it. I do know females will carry babies on their tummies. Heres a pic of a female popping babies, and one of a non gravid one. I wonder if the males have legs (gonopod??sp?) like millipedes... Ill have to go through the colony and peek under all their skirts

 

[rattler_mt]

ive got some breeding like mad on a diet of dried magnolia leaves that a friend in Atlanta sent up to me, i use the leaves as hidding spots for smaller frogs and was going to use them as "hides" for the lil buggers that would be easy to transfer to the frog tanks and they started chowing the leaves like mad. ive got lil babies running around everywhere. any inverts that will eat them such as small scorps or T's? they are just a supliment for the frogs whos main diet is fruit flies so they are breeding faster than i can feed them

 

[zinto]

I had asked Paul from Planet Porcellio about how to sex males and females a while ago. Here's what he had to say:
"After the last pair of legs, right before those two white spots, you'll see something that looks like two legs flat against the body if it's a male. If it's a female, after the last pair of legs, you won't see anything before those two white spots. Also.. the females tend to be a little more round than the males, which are more narrow. If you have a female who's carrying young, you can see a big bulge on the underside belly, between the pairs of legs. That pouch will get bigger and bigger until the babies are released"
I hope this helps!
-Nick

 

[angus]

very nice looking woodlice, very high conrtra on orange colour and black patteren, i only have a small group of white colour one, which much smaller
than what u took in the pics.

 

[OldHag]

Well, its been about a year. Ive kept a few of the colored wood lice together and I would say over 90% of the babies have been colored . One even went BRIGHT orange!!

Its been a fun experiment! Lots of colored ones from mottled grey/yellow to bright orange with grey spots. Heres a pic of a few.

 

[bugmankeith]

That's one nice looking woodlouse! Once in a while I will find one completely brick red, and sometimes orange in color close to what you bred.

It's because a few stay in my basement all year, so there is very little breeding diversity, mostly inbreeding. Eventually thats how the colored ones turn up.